River Odyssey (11 page)

Hollie was a sailor, not a pet. He knew it too.

It was almost midnight when we stood in front of an old café with a wooden sign with fancy lettering in French, which I couldn’t read, but the sign had the face of a queen. I looked at Hollie. “Maybe this is it.”

He wagged his tail. I picked him up and we went in.

There was a small crowd of people sitting around a big table at the back. They were laughing and talking loudly in French. I carried Hollie under my arm and hid him with my jacket. He was used to that when we went inside buildings. Then I saw Marie.

“Alfred!”

She jumped up. The whole group looked in our direction. And then:

“L’outlaw du sous-marin!
Here he is!”

Everyone stood up and welcomed us to the table. I looked at Marie. I had asked her not to tell anybody who I was. I guess she forgot.

“Bienvenue! Bienvenue!
Oh! Look! He has got his dog with him!
C’est le chien du sous-marin!”

Everyone laughed. Marie came over and took Hollie in her arms and hugged him. He didn’t mind. He remembered her. One of the men came up to me and sized me up. “I thought you would be much bigger,” he said, and laughed.

“C’est juste un enfant!”
said someone else.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay. But Marie begged me to and so I sat down. Someone ordered me a glass of wine but Marie said no, some hot chocolate would be better. And crepes. She was right about that. After a while, Hollie and I were both eating crepes and sipping hot chocolate and water. We sat quietly and listened to the conversation, most of which was in French, so I didn’t understand much. But they did ask me a lot of questions and I answered them as well as I could, except for questions about where I was from exactly, or how we built the sub, or, especially, where the sub was right now. Some of the young men kept asking me that but I just smiled and drank my hot chocolate. Before I knew it, it was two o’clock. And then, someone else came in. He stood in front of the table and everyone stopped talking. When Marie looked up and saw who it was, her face went white.

“Jacques!” someone whispered.

My mouth dropped. I didn’t know how he could have come from Anticosti Island so quickly. He must have struggled to get here though because he was wearing the same clothes he had worn on the river and they were dirty and smelly. His hair was dirty too and sticking up. He smelled of campfire and the river. He was a mess.

He came over slowly, sweating and breathing heavily, stood in front of Marie and dropped his head. His eyes were bloodshot and I thought maybe he had been crying too. Everyone at the table was silent. I stared at Marie. She wasn’t impressed.

“Je suis tellement désolé. Je te demande pardon.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying but I knew he was asking for forgiveness. You could read it on his face easily enough. I wondered if she would forgive him.

This was a different person than the man I had met on the river. There, he had been so sure of himself, so unconcerned for the conditions and so dangerously mistaken. Now, he looked like a man who realized he had made a big fat mistake and was hoping it was not too late. I wondered if it was too late. Would she forgive him?

As everyone stared I started to feel sorry for him. I mean, I wouldn’t trust him on the water, that was for sure, but it was kind of hard not to feel bad for him now. Everyone makes mistakes, Sheba had said.

At first, Marie just looked angry, and I thought maybe Jacques was going to leave empty-handed. He stood and waited patiently, staring at the floor like a little boy who had just broken a window. I knew that feeling. Everyone watched silently, and it was an awkward silence. Hollie looked up at me and he looked awkward too. Eventually Marie’s face softened. She reached out her hand and Jacques took it as if it were made of gold. I felt a sudden urge to warn her. Don’t trust him! He will do it again. I didn’t know why I thought that. What did I know? It wasn’t any of my business anyway.

They spoke quietly to each other for a while. Everyone else continued drinking and laughing. Then, Marie and Jacques stood up and announced they were leaving. Jacques was beaming. Marie came over, hugged me and whispered in my ear. “Thank you, Alfred, for everything. Happy travels and keep yourself safe.”

She smelled like strawberries. I wanted to warn her not to trust him, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place. She reached down and hugged Hollie. Then she went out the door with Jacques. They never looked back. I realized in a way I didn’t really know what forgiveness was all about. I had no experience with it. Though I didn’t trust Jacques, I was glad he was getting a second chance.

The rest of the group turned back to laughing and talking. It was time to leave. The sun would be up in just three hours; I didn’t want to risk the sub being discovered by an early morning watchman. I stood up and thanked everyone for the hot chocolate and crepes.

“No! No! Stay longer! Tell us more about the river and the sea! Stay!”

I explained that we couldn’t, thanked everyone again, waved, and went out the door with Hollie under my arm. Unfortunately, three of the young men followed us. “We just want to have a look at your submarine,” they said. “We won’t hurt it, we promise.”

Rats! This was exactly what I was afraid would happen. They didn’t care if I didn’t want to reveal the location of the sub or not; they intended to see it. But I didn’t trust that they would only look at it. Once they saw it, they’d want to look inside. Then, they’d want to sail it. No. There was no way I would lead them to the sub. And so, late as it was, I headed off in another direction. And they followed.

I put Hollie down and we walked slowly. Hollie was happy. But he kept turning around and looking behind us. He knew we were being followed.

We walked all the way up the hill to the Château Frontenac, around it and over to the Quebec Citadel. I was hoping they would get fed up following us but they didn’t. They fell far behind though, and it occurred to me that maybe we could run away from them. But my leg was still too sore to run. Besides, we had already walked so far, and even though Hollie loved to run, he was a very small dog.

And then I thought maybe we could find a way down the cliff. Not a chance! I could better understand now what the English must have gone through the night they scaled the cliff. It was steep!

And so, we turned around and headed back. Now I was tired. The guys following us must have been hiding in the bushes because they disappeared when we turned around, then reappeared later. Boy, were they persistent! Now I was anxious to get back to the sub. The sun would soon be up.

Halfway back I picked Hollie up and carried him. The closer we were to the water, the closer the three guys followed us. All I needed was to get inside with Hollie, shut the hatch and seal it. But I couldn’t let them see where the sub was before we were there, or they might jump onto it first and climb inside.

The sky was dark blue when we stepped onto the bridge leading to the police dock. I could see the barges. The young men were following us like three shadows. They reminded me of the ghost I had seen on Anticosti Island, if that’s what it had been. What did I know? I was so tired.

I walked slowly and calmly past the police boats. I was half expecting someone to come out of the building there and challenge us. We went a little farther. I put Hollie down. Stopping and turning around, I saw the guys stop too. They were about a hundred and fifty feet away. The sub was still about four hundred feet in front of us. I looked at the small building next to the police boats. I was sure there would be someone there on duty. As the young men passed in front of the building I decided to try something. I opened my mouth and yelled, “Hey! Hey!”

The guys didn’t know what was going on. They must have thought I was crazy. But sure enough, a man came out of the building and I heard him ask them what was going on. As they answered him I started walking more quickly. Now we were just three hundred feet from the barges. Now, two hundred. I heard the man yell at me in French. He must have seen us. He kept yelling and I kept walking. I didn’t run. I was pretending I didn’t hear him. We were just a hundred feet from the barges. A light swung in our direction. It was hand-held because it swung unevenly across the pier. Someone was coming quickly. As soon as we reached the barges, I swept Hollie up and climbed down the ladder. I couldn’t see anyone; I was moving too quickly to look. I scampered across the barge and jumped down onto the hull of the sub, startling Seaweed, who had been sleeping there. I opened the hatch and the three of us jumped in. I shut it, sealed it, rushed to the controls and hit the dive switch. Boy, was I relieved!

WHERE THE ST. LAWRENCE
River flows at its narrowest and darkest, just upstream from Quebec City, it flows at its fastest, not counting the rapids west of Montreal. In the retreating tide the river can reach seven knots. Seven knots is about eight miles per hour. A person could walk four miles in an hour if they walked quickly and didn’t stop. But they couldn’t keep up with the retreating tide by walking. They would have to run.

When the tide flowed in, of course the story was different. Then, the river turned around. But it turned less and less the farther upstream you went. After Quebec City, the river looked like a river proper, no longer like the sea invading the land.

When we left Quebec City, the sky was lit with a flaming sun. A flaming sky at night, went the fisherman’s rhyme, and you could expect good weather. A flaming sky in the morning was the one to worry about. I didn’t know if Sheba believed in that or not. Ziegfried would probably explain it through scientific fact—the sun passing through particles of evaporation, or something like that—I didn’t know, but in the morning came a heavy fog, and with the fog came broken glimpses of a flaming sun, and with that sun came the worst day of my life.

I was so tired. So was the crew. But they could sleep; I had to stay awake watching the sonar screen for rocks and shallows and other vessels. I was sailing by engine with the portal a foot above the surface and the hatch wide open. Occasionally, I would poke my head out the portal and try to scout the surrounding area for a suitable place to sleep, but it seemed almost impossible. When the fog lifted, I planned to submerge and search by periscope. Five miles west of the city the fog was still thick, although it was breaking up in patches here and there. As we approached the village of Saint Nicolas, on the southern shore, the map showed the river running very shallow over a shoal of rock and mud close to shore. Rocks jutted out of the water like peaks on a lemon meringue pie. It was easy enough to avoid them as we motored by, but I heard something that made me hesitate.

It sounded like a cat. How could a cat be so far from shore? That didn’t make sense. It sounded so much like a cat wailing its head off that I shut off the engine and drifted for a few minutes, listening carefully.

“Meow, meow, meow, meow… ”

Yes, it was definitely a cat. It even woke Hollie and brought him to the bottom of the portal. I looked down at him and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know, Hollie. It must be out there somewhere.”

And then, through a break in the fog, I saw it. It was sitting on a rock. How on earth it got there I couldn’t imagine. Could it have come out in the low tide, jumping from rock to rock? Maybe it had been drifting on a log and had jumped onto the rock. One thing was certain, when the tide rose, the cat was going to have to swim. And then, it saw us.

“Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow … ”

It wouldn’t stop. I looked down at Hollie. He looked up at me. He looked nervous. “Don’t worry, Hollie. That cat is not joining us. I promise.”

But I did think I should try to rescue it.

If I hadn’t been so tired, if it hadn’t been so foggy, if that darn cat hadn’t kept meowing constantly, maybe I would have made a better decision about how to rescue it. Maybe.

The tide was going to reverse soon, I knew, but wasn’t sure exactly when. This was when the river was most gentle, just before the tide change, and this area of the shoal was particularly easy flowing, as far as I could tell in the fog. But I couldn’t bring the sub close to the cat. I could only turn into a cleft in the shoal and tie up to a rock. I made a lasso with rope, threw it onto the rock and pulled it tight—well, after six throws. I didn’t drop anchor because I didn’t know what the anchor might attach itself to and didn’t want to be trying to dive in a seven-knot current later on. It might have been a good idea to inflate the dinghy too, but, as far as I could tell, the shoal appeared shallow enough to cross on foot and the shore was not far away. It really seemed the easiest thing was to pick up the cat and carry it to shore. I thought it would only take a few minutes.

The cat saw me climb out of the sub and jump into the water.

“Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow … ”

“Yah, yah, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

“Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow… ”

It was really irritating. I was so glad my crew was a dog and a seagull.